English Test Acceptance by Country and Purpose

An admissions office is asking one question: can this person follow lectures and write assessments? A visa officer is asking a different one: is this result from a test my department has approved, sat in a place my department has approved, within the window my department has set? The second question has nothing to do with your English. It is a procurement decision made by a government, and a test that fails it fails no matter how high you scored.

Two lanes, two owners. The admission lane belongs to the university and moves whenever a faculty updates a web page. The visa lane belongs to a ministry and moves by instrument, circular or published list. Both lanes have to be green before you fly.

For a UK visa the Home Office does not accept tests. It accepts providers, and then only specific products from those providers. As of the guidance updated 28 August 2026, five provider names appear, and the split by location is the part that catches people out.

Three consequences follow. First, the ordinary IELTS Academic you sat for your offer is not a SELT: the Student route needs the four-skill IELTS for UKVI booking. Second, ordinary PTE Academic is not a SELT either. Pearson sells two Home Office approved products, and for the Student and Skilled Worker routes it is PTE Academic UKVI. Third, Trinity is approved only for sittings taken inside the UK, so a Trinity ISE taken abroad does not help an entry clearance application; outside the UK the equivalent is PSI's Skills for English UKVI.

TOEFL iBT, the Duolingo English Test, Cambridge C1 Advanced, CELPIP and OET appear nowhere on the SELT list. That does not mean a UK university will not take them. The University of Manchester, for example, publishes a wide list for degree-level entry that includes TOEFL iBT and Cambridge C1 Advanced, while requiring a SELT for separate foundation and pre-sessional courses that sit below degree level. Which is exactly the two-lane problem: the same applicant can be admitted on a TOEFL score and still need an IELTS for UKVI booking if the pre-sessional is a separate course rather than part of a joint CAS.

The Home Office window is fixed: a result must have been awarded in the two years before the date of your application, and you must quote your SELT unique reference number on the form or the application may be refused. If you are weighing a pre-sessional route, read how a conditional offer works first, because the English condition is usually the one that decides whether you get a joint CAS.

There is no federal English test requirement for the F-1 visa. The Department of Homeland Security's Study in the States guidance describes the route as: get accepted by an SEVP-certified school, receive the Form I-20 from a designated school official, pay the I-901 SEVIS fee, then apply for the visa. No test and no score appears anywhere in that sequence. The English gate is entirely the school's admission standard, which is why three universities can want three different things from the same applicant.

Read down the PTE Academic row. One of these three universities publishes a PTE minimum; two do not mention Pearson at all. A student who books PTE because a comparison site said it is widely accepted has bought a test that two of these three admissions offices will not read. The same is true in reverse for Duolingo, which all three take, and which the UK, Canadian, Australian and New Zealand governments all refuse for visa purposes. Our Duolingo English Test score chart shows how those 95 to 120 thresholds map against IELTS and TOEFL bands.

Graduate admission is a third list again. USC's graduate admission page accepts TOEFL iBT including the Home Edition and the Paper Edition, IELTS Academic and IELTS Online, PTE Academic and PTE Academic Online, and Cambridge C1 Advanced, and does not list Duolingo. It also states that scores must be dated within 24 months of the date you submit the application, and that the numbers it publishes are used for placement rather than as university-wide minimums. Before you assume a test is required at all, check when a TOEFL or IELTS waiver applies for grad school, and pack the score report properly using the F-1 visa document checklist.

Canada runs the cleanest separation of the eight countries here, and the sharpest trap. For Express Entry permanent residence, IRCC designates three English tests and no others: CELPIP-General, IELTS General Training and PTE Core. IRCC also states that it does not accept IELTS One Skill Retake for Express Entry, and that results must be less than two years old both when you complete your profile and when you submit the permanent residence application.

PTE Core is not a variant spelling of PTE Academic. It is a separate Pearson product, and it is the one on the IRCC list. Booking PTE Academic for an Express Entry profile produces a result IRCC will not read. The mirror-image error is booking IELTS Academic: for citizenship, IRCC says in plain words that it only accepts IELTS General Training, and if you hold only Academic results you have to find other proof. If you are unsure which module you sat, the IELTS Academic versus General Training comparison shows what actually differs between them.

Two rules soften the picture. For citizenship the bar is CLB 4 in speaking and listening only, and IRCC tells applicants to include the test result even if it is expired, which is the one place in this whole topic where an old certificate still works. And for the study permit itself, IRCC's document list asks for a letter of acceptance, a provincial or territorial attestation letter and proof of funds. It does not ask for a language test: the designated learning institution's admission standard is the gate, so a Canadian university list such as McGill's, which takes Duolingo at 125 and PTE Academic at 65, governs entry while the IRCC list governs immigration later.

No on both counts. The Department of Home Affairs publishes a closed list of tests and minimum overall scores for the Subclass 500 student visa, and it separately states that it does not accept evidence from tests where the entire test is delivered online, naming IELTS Online, LANGUAGECERT Academic Online, OET@Home, CELPIP Online, MET Digital taken at home, and the TOEFL iBT Home Edition as examples. The Duolingo English Test does not appear on the list at all.

These are the scores for tests taken on or after 7 August 2025, as published by Home Affairs, page last updated 1 July 2026. The second and third columns are the concessions available when your main course is packaged with English language study.

Two dated details matter this year. From 21 January 2026 you must select "Taking TOEFL for Australia" when you register, or the sitting is not valid for Australian visa purposes. And Home Affairs will not accept TOEFL iBT tests completed between 26 July 2023 and 4 May 2024, because the test offered in that window was not an approved test. If you sat TOEFL in that period, that result cannot be rescued.

On timing, Home Affairs measures from a different point depending on your evidence level: the test must have been completed within the two years before you lodged the application if you are at Regular Evidence level, or within the two years before a decision is made if you are at Streamlined Evidence level and the department has asked for evidence.

An online edition is a different test as far as a government is concerned, which is why this explorer lists them as separate entries rather than folding them into the parent test. Getting this wrong is the single most common way a valid score becomes unusable.

Almost everybody quotes two years. Almost nobody quotes the same two years, because the endpoint differs: test date to application date, to decision date, or to course start date. Two years measured to a start date is materially shorter than two years measured to an application date, often by nine months or more.

Worked number. You sit a test on 1 October 2026 and want a September 2028 start. Against USC's rule the certificate is fine if you submit by 1 October 2028, comfortably inside a December 2027 deadline. Against ASU's rule it expires on 1 October 2028, which is after an August 2028 start, so it still works. Against Ireland's rule, measured to the start date, a September 2028 start needs a test dated on or after roughly September 2026, so 1 October 2026 clears it by a month. Change the start to January 2029 and the same certificate fails the Irish and ASU tests while still passing USC's. The certificate did not change; the endpoint did.

Two dated facts that shift every score you read. ETS moved TOEFL iBT to a 1 to 6 scale in half-point steps on 21 January 2026, with the overall score being the average of the four sections rounded to the nearest half band. During the two-year transition each report shows a CEFR level, the 1 to 6 scores and a comparable 0 to 120 overall, which is why some university tables now list both columns. The TOEFL iBT format and timing guide covers what else changed in the test itself.

This explorer only carries rows CampusBreeze could verify against an official or named-institution page. If your combination is missing, that is a gap in our checking, not evidence that the test is refused. Three things to do.

If the country is missing, run the six steps above. Most immigration departments publish either a closed list, like Australia and Canada, or nothing at all, like Germany and the Netherlands, where the answer is always that the institution decides. There is rarely a third case.

If the test is missing from a country that publishes a closed list, treat it as refused for that visa until the department names it. A closed list is closed. If the country publishes no list, the test is not refused; it is simply unaddressed, and the institution's page is the only thing that decides.

If a university is missing, ask its admissions office in writing for the test name and the minimum, and ask which delivery mode it accepts. Keep the reply. CampusBreeze makes free study tools and guides and is not a substitute for that email.